Email Author Robert Wilonsky

2002 Stories by Robert Wilonsky

• Adapt Or Wither

  published December 19, 2002

  Adaptation is the most overrated movie of the year (of all time?) by people who should know better. Film critics have either been... More >>

• End of the Road

  published December 12, 2002

  Notes from a network executive's forthcoming biography, pilfered from the desk of an editor at a major publishing house. This was hard to read, as... More >>

• Jenny from the Crock

  published December 12, 2002

  Maid in Manhattan, in which Jennifer Lopez goes from pauper to princess, comes not from a screenplay but from a handful of self-help... More >>

• True Dat

  published December 5, 2002

  CHARACTERS: Russell Simmons: He is 45, wears a white baseball cap, a T-shirt with the words "40 Acres and a Bentley" on the back, and a... More >>

• School Daze

  published October 10, 2002

  Roger Avary's screenplay for The Rules of Attraction is a remarkable work of literature: the disassembly and reconstruction of an... More >>

• The South Falls, Again

  published September 26, 2002

  So there's no confusion, the star of Sweet Home Alabama is Reese Witherspoon, who graces the film's poster in full-body pout and... More >>

• Burr, Not Chilly

  published September 19, 2002

  Among the more preposterous rumors spread by Harry Knowles, whose Ain't It Cool News movie-biz-gossip Website garners undue attention from studios... More >>

• Fallon Fast

  published August 22, 2002

  Things you will learn from a forthcoming oral history of Saturday Night Live: Dan Aykroyd slept with, among others, Gilda Radner, Laraine... More >>

• Team G-Attica

  published August 22, 2002

  Andrew Niccol keeps making the same movie over and over again and dressing it in slightly different clothes: the sleek charcoal Hugo Boss grays of... More >>

• Do the Math

  published August 8, 2002

  A press pass, reporter-turned-novelist Gregory McDonald once said, is good for one thing: It allows the journalist to ask very smart people... More >>

• Happy Ending

  published August 1, 2002

  Like George Clooney says in Ocean's Eleven, do the math: four Canon XL1 digital cameras, one dual 800 MHz Power Mac G4, a copy of editing... More >>

• After M*A*S*H

  published July 18, 2002

  At this very moment, members of the Television Critics Association are gathered at the Ritz-Carlton in Pasadena, California, to preview this... More >>

• Fight Club

  published July 11, 2002

  A pal asked last week, "Who you writing about?" Told him, "Art Linson," which screwed his face into a big ol' question mark. "He's a movie... More >>

• Ice Ice Maybe

  published July 4, 2002

  They stream in and out, all day and all night, one after the other: band members, producers, business associates, friends, family, strangers,... More >>

• Dirty Deeds

  published June 27, 2002

  Talk about trading down: Adam Sandler now stands in for Gary Cooper, Winona Ryder for Jean Arthur, screenwriter Tim Herlihy (The Waterboy,... More >>

• Duh Press

  published June 20, 2002

  Shouldn't have said yes, couldn't say no. The deal was simple, and those who chose to accept it had made their own private pact with the... More >>

• Eminem

  published June 20, 2002

  Think of it this way, and perhaps Marshall Mathers's (or Eminem's, or Slim Shady's) 25-mil-plus-sold popularity makes more sense to the old farts... More >>

• Report Card

  published June 20, 2002

  Steven Spielberg just might turn into a great director if only he'd stop sabotaging his movies. For the second time in as many films, he... More >>

• Bourne Free

  published June 13, 2002

  The plot of The Bourne Identity is astonishingly straightforward. It is bereft of twists (instead we're offered tangible... More >>

• Dr. Strange

  published May 30, 2002

  When this column debuted at the beginning of 2000, readers and editors scoffed at its occasional subject matter, the comic book. Kids'... More >>

• The Prince

  published May 23, 2002

  Thirty-four years later, Carson has returned to the school to deliver a series of lectures on the power of fable and film as metaphor, and he... More >>

• Revolting

  published May 9, 2002

  Last month GQ ran a disquietingly flattering profile of Joe Roth, who, in January 2000, quit his gig as Walt Disney Studios chairman to... More >>

• Skate or Die

  published May 2, 2002

  "This is contrary to how we grew up," Stacy Peralta is saying a few minutes after getting dropped off at a newspaper office by a limo driver. The... More >>

• Lazarus, Reborn

  published April 25, 2002

  Peter Bogdanovich, maybe the last man alive who wears a neckerchief without irony, holds a copy of a newspaper article in which his old friend... More >>

• When Online Got Off Base

  published April 11, 2002

  On a good day, Mark Cuban might respond to a journalist's query with a terse, unpunctuated e-mail that reads like something dashed off by a... More >>